Action Figure Daniel

Category: Writing

  • The Curse of Assumed Common Goals

    I have a particularly fond memory of my younger brother (though, I must admit that my memories are not the clearest on this topic and I might have embellished parts). It was back when we were all younger. The family, all except my brother, was all gathered in the living room to watch a movie or some such. As we were enjoying our peace my brother came suddenly bursting into the room yelling, “I got it, I got it!” His entrance made such a shock that we all shifted our attached to him and the “it” he had “got”. My mother, in a caring tone, congratulated him and asked if she could see “it”. He was so proud he popped open his hand and showed her. To her great horror, and the family’s astonishment, there, lying in his tiny palm was my mother’s beta fish. It was beyond all help as my younger brother had, in his great excitement, neglected to handle the fish with care and it had been crushed to death while in transit from the upstairs bedroom (where the fish had no doubt been sleeping) down to the living room.

    Though there are many humorous spins and analogies that I could make with this story, there is one in particular that I wish to make: there can be grave danger in assumed common goals. My mother’s goal was to keep the fish alive while my brother thought the goal was to catch the pesky fish. In this case, the assumed common goal (that really was not common) led to the death of a fish, but in many cases the assumed common goals can lead to much greater problems.

    On some level we all know and understand this, but even in the most basic of assumptions we all too quickly dismiss this truth. Instead of soliciting our goals, we assume that everyone, or at least the people in the immediate vicinity of our lives, have the same basic beliefs. Then we are faced with shock, dismay or disappointment when we find out that what we thought was a universal goal was really only a personal goal.

    This curse of assumed common goals is pervasively around us in our daily endeavors and projects. Think of the last time you were driving with a young child in the car. Your primary goal was likely to travel safely and you likely assumed that everyone else on the road had the same goal. This was probably not the case. Instead, most people probably had a primary goal of getting to their destination quickly, or to find out where their friends are before they pass them.

    While driving safely on the road might not be every driver’s primary goal (though it should be) it is still a high goal for most drivers. A better illustration might be a work place venue: collaborating to reduce costs across the company. There are many ways to go about the process of reducing cost, but I will focus on two: by eliminating jobs and rearranging the company accordingly; and by streamlining processes and eliminating positions that are no longer needed. Both methods will result in the end reduction of overall costs for the company, but they each have very different focuses.

    The process of eliminating positions is one that is likely to have a primary goal of seeing what the company can live without. Do we need someone special to clean up, or can we convince other employees to do the work? Do we need someone to oversee these workers, or can we assign them to a different manager and expect less supervision? With this goal in mind, reducing costs is much like dieting with a very definite list of things that you can and cannot do without.

    Consider working under the assumption that the other departments in the company were also operating under this same paradigm. Imagine the shock and horror you would experience when you found out that another department was in fact binging instead of dieting. They have been spending money on projects that, in the dieting mind set, should have been cut. This horror is likely to come because the offending department is operating under a different way of reducing costs.

    The process of streamlining is one that is likely to have a primary goal of automating as much as possible. Is there any way to digitize this data without manually inputting it? Can we make this paperwork flow smoother so it takes less time? Can we create self-help forums for employees to handle basic issues by themselves? With this goal in mind, reducing costs is much like exercising with a list of practices that will allow you to stay trim without foregoing all of the good stuff.

    While both of these methods can produce the same desired results, reduced costs, they have very different methods of achieving those results along with different operational positions (the basis for which decision are made) and the end results that each gains. It is while considering these minor differences that the real differences between the common goals becomes pronounced and, as they continue, begin to clash.

    The elimination of positions (dieting) is operating from a position of retreat or withdrawal. It says, “We have overreached and done too much to possibly be able to maintain our position so we must cut back even if that means that we give up some good stuff.” It is a defensive reaction to the environment and sends a clear signal that the only way to survive is to cut back.

    The irony of these two styles is that both are equally valid expressions of the same goal, it is entirely possible for managers in both departments to do extensive work (even while working together) to reduce costs and only towards the end of the process realize that the other has been going about the process entirely differently than they have. The incorrect assumption of a common goal is not likely to bother the streamlining manager, but is likely to cause quite a stir for the eliminating manager because he has been sacrificing and “going without” for the benefit of the company only to find out that others have been enjoying themselves and still saving money simply by “exercising” a little.

    The two styles will clash dramatically when the cost savings proposals are put forth. The elimination position will present a plan that requires cut equal to the savings. It will present no long term incentive for taking action but will instead focus on how the cuts will benefit the company now. As operations improve, this position will insist that the eliminated workers are restored in order to keep up with the new demand.

    The streamlining position will present a radically different plan that requires upfront investment in order to improve systems. Upon the completion of the system improvements, efficiencies will be realized such that positions can be eliminated or reallocated. There is no short term incentive for taking action (in fact, spending money to make money is often considered a disincentive) but the plan will instead focus on bringing savings to the company in the long run. As operations improve, this position will not insist on a directly proportional increase of workers because the improved systems can handle more throughput with less workers.

    In the end, both managers will have put forth effort to reduce costs, both managers will have action plans that will save money for the company and both managers will be in alignment with the overarching company goal of reducing costs. They will, however, have plans that look nothing alike and the end results will be dramatically different all because they did not share the same common goal.

  • The Virtues of Closed Versus Open

    I keep hearing HTML 5 this and HTML 5 that. The funny part, to me, is that while people are making stuff in HTML 5, it is not a standard yet. The W3C (World Wide Web Consortium, the people who are in charge of defining HTML) is taking forever to settle the finer points of how the new web standard should work. I am not exaggerating too much when I say that. Consider that HTML 3 (January 1997) was released a little more than a year after HTML 2 (November 1995) had been published. HTML 4 was released less than a year after that (December 1997). In the year 2000, the W3C gave us HTML 4.01 and XHTML 1.1 to help make programmers lives easier when using new media content (notice that was when the internet started looking and feeling more like it does today). The newest version, HTML 5 is designed to make the programmers lives even easier and thus make the internet even more amazing of a place. Work on the new version started in 2008, now three years later we are still waiting. A “working draft” has been published meaning, “We think it will look something like this, so start programming but do not be shocked if we change it on you later on.”
    While the “draft” has been published and programmers have been slowly working with it, many companies such as Mozilla (makers of Fire Fox), Apple and Google are pretending that the draft is gold (a programming term that means, “this is the final release for production”) and are running hard to make the browsers play well with the new almost standard. The problem with this is that they are almost standards, but not quite, and many of the particulars have not been settled which means that different browsers are handling things differently. For example, drop shadows in Fire Fox work differently enough from Safari and Chrome that web programmers (the people that these standards are supposed to help) have to right triple the code in order to use the cool new effect (once the HTML 5 way, once the Fire Fox way and once the Safari way). And triple is not even counting all the extra coding that has to be for Internet Explorer that does not play nice with anyone else.
    Back to the main point of this post: the main reason for this splintering is because HTML 5 has taken longer to develop and get out the door than any prior version of the standard. You may ask why this is the case. Surely this is not because HTML 5 is so much technically superior that a lot of extra effort has to be taken to develop it, a lot of the technical coolness is in making the code flow freer. It certainly is not because the W3C is waiting to see how that world will continue to evolve, HTML 6 can take care of that. No, the reason that it is taking so long to get HTML 5 from draft to standard is because the big boys (that were not there, or at least were not as big, for previous versions) spend too much time fighting amongst themselves that they cannot decide anything. Google wants to support their WebM video format because it is free and open. Apple wants to use their H.264 MP4 format because they think it is the best (and they happen to control the H.264 standard), but no one else wants to use it because Apple often does crazy things that throws everyone for a loop. (For example, the whole Photoshop on the Mac issue, a summary follows.)

    In case you missed it: When Mac OS X was released in March 2001, Apple caused a major stir amongst computer programmers. OS X was the first major operating system to severely break backward compatibility. Most other systems (namely Microsoft Windows) typically took great pains to remain reverse compatible while adding new features. But Apple, in a very “Steve Jobsish” way, suddenly said, “Um, world, we are going to change our core programming language in our next release (later that year) so start rewriting your programs because your old programs won’t work as well.” This threw everyone for a loop and the computer world was full of a lot of grumbling, mostly over the incredible expense of rewriting an application in a new language and on such short notice. Because of this last minute switch, there were few applications ready for OS X when it was released. Most of the programs that were available were from Apple itself. Adobe, creators of the extremely popular Photoshop software (and in many ways a competitor with Apple’s popular Final Cut Pro and Garage Band software) rolled their eyes and released a compatible version of Photoshop a year later. Fast forward several years to October 2007 when, concurrent with the release of a new version of OS X, Apple announced that once again, they were changing the foundational programming of the operating system, this time they would end support for 32-bit programs. Microsoft made similar announcements concerning Windows Vista, Windows 7 and Windows 8. Adobe was ready with an updated version of Photoshop that moved in Microsoft’s desired direction shortly after the launch of Windows Vista and 7 (Windows 8 has yet to be launched or even finalized, but is supposed to be the first version of Windows that only support 64-bit, this means that Microsoft gave the world more than 5 years advanced notice for what Apple gave a few month’s notice). Does Adobe love Microsoft so much more than Apple? Maybe. Does Adobe love Windows users so much more than Mac users? Not really, especially considering that Adobe has a strong Mac customer base and the Windows customer base just recently caught up. Why then was Adobe ready for Microsoft’s changes and not Apple’s? The difference is in the subtleties of the timings. Apple announced their dramatic change months ahead of the release of the new OS (mid-2007), giving the company little time to do anything but sneeze. Microsoft announced their dramatic change in 2003 and 2005 for Windows Vista, 2005 and 2007 for Windows 7 and 2007 and 2009 for Windows 8. The difference is that Apple has a history of surprising everyone with big changes that are happening right away while Microsoft (and most other large companies like IBM, Oracle, Sun Microsystems and Google) tend to give other companies a lot of notice for big changes. By the way, Adobe didn’t release an updated version of Photoshop until April 2010, two and a half years later. The lengthy delay and the “nasty-gram” sent just after Apple’s announcement were meant to say, “knock it off or we will stop playing nice.” Apple responded by not supporting Flash on the iPhone and then banned applications made using Adobe Flash tools (until the government started eying them for anti-trust law violations).

    Adobe, who also sits on the W3C, wants to continue to push Flash to the forefront tauting that with Flash, users do not have to worry about the format, the people building the site do. While Microsoft is fighting for their favorite WMV format, which stands for Windows Media Video and thus no one wants to touch it even with a long stick. All this, and we have not even touched to the “groups” yet. Consider the Motion Picture Experts Group. Heard of them? Probably not directly, but they are the people that invented, and control, the MPEG standards including the incredibly popular and world famous MP3 format, MPEG 1 and 2 formats (used for DVDs and satellite TV respectively) and MP4 which is quickly replacing the previously mentioned formats. Each iteration allows for more compact files (read: faster download times) without sacrificing quality (but your computer has to do a lot of extra work). All of these companies and groups are arguing over which formats and standard must be support, and this is just for video. I am not even going to touch audio or graphics.
    All of this lengthy process of deciding on which video codec to use as the new web standard, a standard that within the next couple of years will need to be revised and at that point, the most current and popular video codec can be added. But, what we see here is all of these companies realize the extreme value in being the “chosen” codec until the new standard can be published.
    —
    As a direct competitor to HTML 5 (at least in the mind of Apple Inc.,’s Steve Job) we have Adobe Flash. Originally released in 1995 as Future Splash by Smartsketch, Flash has been bought out twice: once by Macromedia, in 1996, and again by Adobe in 2005. According to Adobe’s computer census, Flash enjoys a nearly perfect market penetration, with recent (being the current and previous version) versions on 99% of computers on the internet. That is a huge market penetration, of which I can think of no other non-governmental product (i.e. electricity, water and sewer) that comes close. In more than 15 years, developers and consumers (mostly forced by developers) have consistently chosen Flash so strongly that even in an era of cutthroat business practices including the great Dot Com Bubble burst of 2000, Flash has expanded adoption in order to capture the entire market and has kept pace to maintain its market share. (In fairness, Flash was aided by being included as a default plugin with Microsoft Internet Explorer for a time.)
    Now, let us consider what Flash has done in their 17 years of existence. Flash came from humble beginnings, as rightly it should. It was originally developed as a pen drawing tool that was built out to include vector animation for the then fledgling internet (very few people had internet access in those days). The few people who did have internet had very limited bandwidth. This bandwidth limitation kept most web pages confined to simple text and  basic backgrounds (in HTML, colors are set with a simple hex code such as #000000 for black or #FFFFFF for white, hex code takes up a lot less bandwidth than graphics). While some graphic formats were available for animation, such of Compuserve’s GIF, which included transparency too), these graphics were limited by color restrictions (GIFs can show 256 colors, 255 if one color is transparent), a lack of support (the Motion Picture Experts Group’s MPG format still is not well support in browser), a difficulty to produce (no easy-to-use MPG animation tools were around in 1995), and if developers had been able to overcome all of the aforementioned obstacles they were likely to have ended up with a “huge” file that, though small by today’s standards, would have taken web page viewers hours to download. All of this meant that the not so wonderful animation was not likely to be viewed by anyone and thus was billed as wasted effort.
    The introduction of Flash changed all that. Flash used vector graphics. While not the best for every application—people pictures do not look too good in them—they are excellent for general shapes and lines. In computer speak, shapes and lines are simply geometric formulas that are easy to store, easy to transmit and easy to render.  Using HTML’s simple hex color codes made coloring them really easy too. Finally, because vector graphics are simple calculations, they are really easy to make bigger and smaller: for twice the size, simply have the computer multiply by 2 (or whatever other multiplier you want). As vectors get larger they maintain their crisp, sharp look, unlike the alternative graphic formats.
    Macromedia produced two components to Flash: the authoring tool and the plugin which is used to view Flash. The authoring tool meant that designers could produce their own animations without having to wait for programmers or video producers to work with them, a huge benefit for the designer. While the authoring tool costs money, developers could show their work to the world without worrying about their consumers having the right plugin: if a consumer did not have Flash, or the correct version, they could quickly download it for free. This setup led to Flash’s strong adoption throughout the early internet among both producers and consumers.
    After releasing the first version of Flash, Macromedia continued to add features that were of great benefit to developers, features that, in effect, severed the need pervasive trend (at least, to an ever increasing larger degree) of a programmer to work with the designer to make compelling content. While this may not seem significant, consider the two different worlds that programmers and designers come from and how difficult it can be to for one to communicate the vision of what they are trying to do in a way that the other can readily understand and accept.
    In 1997, two years after Flash’s first release, Macromedia added a host of new features and laid the foundation that producers would be using for years to come. The next year, in 1998, Macromedia sensed that the relatively new MP3 format would become a powerful market force and added support for playing the new format from within Flash. This greatly expanded the capabilities of Flash. Prior to that point, Flash could only handle WAV and MIDI files. WAV files are actual recordings of real sound that generally include a full audio spectrum, but also includes a full file size (good quality wave audio is about 10mb a minute, far too large for the still restrictive bandwidth to allow, especially when compared to MP3’s 1mb a minute). MIDI is synthesized sounds and music; while the files are really small, they are also very limited in quality and sound more like a Queen song that the London Philharmonic Orchestra. The following year, streaming MP3 support was added allowing consumers to start listening to sounds and music without downloading the whole file.
    The years 2000 and 2002 saw the introduction of Actionscript and video support respectively. The addition of Actionscript welcomed programmers back into Macromedia’s internet development arena by providing them a programmatic interface in which they could further enhance Flash animations by giving them custom logic sets (to do things that Macromedia had not imagined Flash doing) and allowed for dynamic content. No longer was the developer limited to text, words, video and information that was available at publication, using Actionscript, content could be added and updated on the fly without republishing the Flash project. The introduction of video not only extended the features of Flash, but also offered a solution to a prevalent problem across the maturing internet: producers, developers and consumer could not decide on a video production tool and plugin. Adding it to Flash made the choice simple, especially when their then more than 90% market penetration was considered. Almost everyone on the internet already had Flash, so why not use it. Additionally, Flash allow the developers to make custom interfaces so the video frame looked and felt like the rest of the site; the producers could protect their video against download and theft (though, later tools would emerge to work around this); customers often need do nothing, the magical plugin they downloaded in the past would magically play the video they wanted to watch.
    The 2003 release of Flash completed the foundational process of turning Flash into a truly ubiquitous platform both on and off the internet. This release included Actionscript 2, extending and deepening Flash’s programmatic abilities over the previous version that made advanced programming functions such as database interaction and dynamic content rendering more powerful and easier for the programmers; extended support for popular graphics formats, Adobe Illustrator files (a popular and powerful vector graphics program, think of it as Photoshop for vectors); inclusion in the popular (especially amongst business users) Adobe Acrobat; and charting features for business users. By this time, Flash had already achieved nearly universal distribution across internet connected computers and these additional features strengthened its position amongst both business users (who want to ensure the secure, as in difficult to steal, and reliable distribution of corporate information, and consumers who had begun to rely on the internet as not just a source of information, but a source of rich and engaging media.
    After Adobe’s acquisition of Macromedia in 2005, the development of Flash continued including the release of Actionscript 3 (continuing the strengthening of the developers’ side of Flash while securing Flash by disallowing Flash to interact with the host without the users knowledge), and the inclusion of upcoming video encoding standards including H.264 and MP4, and tighter integration with Adobe’s other development environments such as Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop.
    In 2009, Adobe delivered on their promised goals announced when Adobe bought Macromedia: Flash became an open standard. By publishing the specifications for Flash, Adobe knocked down one of the last barriers in adoption of Flash (not that very many people were actively opposed to it). Now everyone could see exactly what made Flash tick and could even build their own Flash plugins and development tools if they so desired. While some effort has been made to create a less expensive alternative to Adobe Flash (the development program) the comparative difficulty of programming a suitable development environment to the low cost of Adobe Flash has proved too difficult to overcome. Adobe has maintained a competitively priced product by separating the more advance Adobe Flash features into Adobe Flash Professional, leaving a lower featured and prices, though still adequate, Adobe Flash on the market and by including Adobe Flash in their Creative Suite bundles.
    As to custom plugins, no one really trusts another company to develop a better, more stable plugin than what Adobe itself produces so Adobe’s Flash plugin is still the ubiquitous one plugin.
    Publication of the Flash specifications signaled a clear direction for Adobe and their Flash product: they want to make money off the authoring tools, not the technology itself. This directional signal has been further reinforced by the diversification of Adobe Flash (less featured and lower cost versions) and Adobe’s strong efforts to extend Flash onto every available platform with variants including Linux, Macintosh, Windows, iPhone, Symbian, BlackBerry and Android with continued to attempts to get Flash onto ever more devices. In this context, the opening and broadening of Flash is the only course that makes sense. Any company can build Flash into their device, any programmer can build Flash extensions and any user can use and enjoy Flash.
    With the completion of the Flash foundational platform in 2003, Macromedia added the last vital features needed to make the broad base of developers and consumers happy with their product. In fact, every addition and development made by Macromedia and later Adobe, have been delivered in direct response to the requests, suggestions and demands of their consumers. It is, as Adobe is well aware of, in their best interest to continue to develop the platform to meet their customer’s needs. Any slip, any mishap, will allow room for a competitor to enter. Once a competitor has a toe hold, they will have a niche within which to establish and eventually erode Adobe’s position.
    —
    While HTML and Flash may seem to be unrelated topics, the two stories, when compared, shed valuable insight on the processes and functionality of the two different styles of development: open (HTML) versus closed (Adobe), shared interest (or self-interest) versus vested interest (singular interest), responding to personal needs versus responding to customer needs.
    In the HTML development process, the WC3 had great success early in the development process. Even though the process has continued to remain open, the self-interest of the individual companies involved has driven the development process from one of harmony and continuity into a contentious frenzy with each company seeking to position themselves in the most profitable position possible. On the other hand, the closed (though transparent) development path chosen by Adobe has led to continued dramatic improvement over time, specifically responding to customer needs over time and focusing on building a solid business framework. There is no one but Adobe to be responsible for a good product (which will make them money) or a bad product (which will loss them money). In the closed environment, the needs of the customers, their actual needs as opposed to the perceived needs that would be represented and skewed in favor of the company demanding them, are the point of focus instead of whatever will make the company a core component while leaving others to rely upon them.

    (Thank you to Google and Wikipedia for providing the invaluable assistance in bringing all the details together for this essay.) 

  • Why it’s Martha Stewart and not some other woman

    I once had a discussion at work about putting things away. I was arguing that we should always be putting away the stacks of paperwork that were routinely left out on desks, especially paperwork that was used on a daily basis. Others agreed that most paperwork should be put away after being used but that paperwork used every day should be left out. I think that such stacks of paperwork quickly become unwieldy and begin to overtake desks like blackberry vines planted over a septic take. This overtaking would not be such a problem except it looks horrible and proves nearly impossible to find anything, especially when the keeper of the papers is off for the day.

    I saw that my arguments for order could not compete with arguments of laziness and it struck me: “Why is Martha Stewart so famous?” I thought out loud. The room went silent, no one could answer (this was years before she was hauled off to jail for insider trading). “Martha Stewart is so famous because her house is immaculate.”

    The room remained silent, I had found a mascot for my argument. I hadn’t actually prepared this defense but the words “Martha Stewart” came out of my mouth before I had any idea of how I could connect her and our paperwork dilemma. I started running with the defense, making it up as I went along, all the while hoping it would lead somewhere good.

    “Martha Stewart is so famous because she is always immaculate. Every day, every project, every craft, is always put away meticulously: all the beads are sorted and stored in separate containers, the pens and markers are sorted by color and spectra, the paintbrush are carefully cleaned; every thing to its place, every thing stored in its proper way. This attention to detail means that Martha is always presentable and people want to listen to her because her very habit of cleanliness makes her seem more trustworthy and reasonable. That is how a Customer Service department should be. When people come to talk to us, they should be able to trust that we will care for their information as carefully as we care for our workspace. They should be able to trust that if we cannot find records, it is because it never happened not because we might have misplaced the records somewhere. They should be able to trust that we are meticulous professionals. People, customers and the whole rest of the company, should respect us for our skilled record keeping and thorough attention to detail. They should not have cause to be distracted by enormous stacks of paper on our desks or for the constant interruption of someone needing some particular piece of paper that should have been filed away but was not.”

    I ended my soapbox speech and there was stunned silence. My suggestion of always putting stuff away was adopted and to this day, the offices maintain a generally organized appearance (though I think that has more to do with a few cases of missing paperwork and less to do with my appeal, but I will take what I can get). Though I do not know for sure why Martha Stewart is so famous, I do believe that clean and presentable work spaces are critical to maintaining a trustworthy and professional environment. Get as dirty and messing as you want on a given project, spread it out across the whole office if you need to, just make sure that at the end of the day everything, every thing, is put away as it should be.

  • Little Bandula

    This was a creative writing assignment for my Developing World. Our assignment was to write a fictional story based on real facts that would show the struggles of Sri Lanka. For this assignment Kendra, Jessica and I created Little Bandula to show the less than desirable, but not overwhelming bad conditions of Sri Lanka. We originally published this 5 Nov 2010.

    Bandula’s Quest

    “No,” Bandula cried as he threw down his lunch bowl, sending scraps of food flying across the room like pieces of shrapnel. The TV had just announced that President Rajapaksa had ordered General Fonseka to be arrested. The old war general had been Bandula’s hero ever since his older brother, Prem, told Bandula what it was like to serve under the General.

    Prem fought with the General in the civil war against the Tamils. On the few chances that Bandula got to talk to his older brother, all he heard about were stories of how amazing the General was. It was towards the end of the war that the news came that Prem would never come home. He had been killed in one of the last operations against the rebels. The war ended a few months later.

    Their parents had hoped that the General would win the upcoming elections. Such a great leader who brought them success in the war could lead them in success in the future. Bandula didn’t know much about politics but he knew that with the General in prison, he couldn’t win the election.

    When Bandula’s attention shifted back to the TV again, the news anchor started explaining why the General had been arrested.

    On the television screen stood Mahesh, Bandula’s older sister, “President Rajapaksa’s official release stated that the General had violated political laws by using his official military position to campaign against the president.” she said. “The General denies the accusations,” she continued, “and the President has yet to publish any evidence stating that ‘the evidence is for the courts to see’.”

    Thoughts were brewing in Bandula’s anxious mind and anger swelled in his young heart. He couldn’t stand by and let this injustice happen. He, Bandula, would free the General. Bandula knew it would be hard, but someone had to make sure that justice was carried out. He hurriedly grabbed his jacket and ran outside. He had to think, so he grabbed his “thinking hatchet”, just in case.

    Bandula wandered through fields trying to figure out what he would do. Thoughts swam through his brain on exactly how he would save the General. Bandula wasn’t really paying attention to where he was going when suddenly he found himself lying on the ground. Covering his view of the sun was a face- an angry face.

    “Why didn’t you come over last night after school!?” Kiri yelled at him. He pushed her off of him.

    “You could have just said ‘hi’,” Bandula said sulkily as he dusted himself off.

    “You could have just come over,” Kiri replied.

    “Not now, Kiri. I have a crisis to deal with,” Bandula said passionately, slamming his fists against the heavy air.

    “Boys!” Kiri proclaimed, shaking her sleek, black hair in disgust. “So… what’s the crisis?”

    “The General has been arrested,” Bandula shouted. “Gosh, don’t you know anything?” Bandula started towards his hideout in the forest. Kiri ran to catch up, stumbling in the hurried rush. Just then, Sinha sprang out from his hiding place in the bushes, bearing all of his teeth, banging his chest like a wild man, and screeching loudly.

    “What do you want?” Bandula said, with anger leaping from his mouth.

    “Yeah,” Kiri shouted from behind, just catching up to Bandula. “We’re dealing with a crisis here!”

    “Oh,” Sinha said, feeling a little guilty for trying to scare his friends. Before he could offer to help or even ask what the crisis was about, the three heard his mom calling.

    Sinha looked shamefully at the ground, “I’d better go before she gets mad,” he said.

    Bandula and Kiri made their way carefully and silently through the forest to their hideout. They took each step deliberately, unsure of their immediate future. When they arrived at the hideout, Bandula pushed the make-shift door aside and they sat on the dirt floor, ready to concoct a plan. Kiri broke the silence first.

    “So, what’s the plan?” She asked.

    “We’ve got to break him out of jail,” Bandula said, like a man possessed with fury that had been kept inside for too long.

    “How can we do that?” Kiri said, trying to tame the now shaking Bandula, “You have to remember we’re only fourteen”.

    “I don’t know,” Bandula said, helplessly and beaten. He continued, “I just don’t want everything my brother fought for to be wasted.” Tears were starting to come to his eyes. A large tear slid slowly down his dark cheek.

    “Why don’t we start first thing tomorrow?” Kiri suggested, shrugging a shoulder.

    Bandula looked through the make-shift windows of the hideout, it was getting late and soon the sun would be setting. He nodded his head, “first thing in the morning, the revolution starts” he said with a triumphant tone. The two walked back to their houses in resolute silence.

    Back at home, Bandula ate his dinner in front of the TV. His mother hated when he did this, but she wasn’t in much of a mood to stop him. The news of the General’s arrest had come as a shock to his parents.

    “Let’s go to our anchor at the capitol,” the News announcer said. When the cameras cut, they didn’t cut to Mahesh, it was some man that Bandula didn’t know.

    “Where’s Mahesh?” Bandula cried despairingly. His sister was always on the evening news, especially covering political news. His dad came in the room and turned off the TV.

    “There is something you need to know, little Bandula,” his dad said with a grim tone.

    Bandula put down his dinner bowl to brace himself against the news. He let out a troubling sigh in anticipation.

    “Your sister, Mahesh,” his father paused, trying to maintain his authoritative tone. His mother stood trembling in the doorway, a bleak look glazed her eyes. He cleared his throat before continuing, “Mahesh has been arrested for saying mean things against the President.”

    Bandula was struggling to grasp this news. “Little Bandula,” his father was looking him square in his hopeless brown eyes, “please, please don’t do anything that might make us lose you too.” Bandula’s mother joined them mournfully, with wild tears already streaming from her withered face.

    Bandula lied awake in his bed for most of the night. He wasn’t sure what he should do or even what he could do. Questions came at him, one after the other. Should he try to free the General? Should he try to free his sister? What if he too was arrested? How would his parents live with themselves knowing that they had lost all of their children? But, he felt like he had to do something, regardless of consequences. He couldn’t just wait for a better Sri Lanka. He wanted a better Sri Lanka now.

    The next morning, while eating breakfast, Kiri came over. But before they could make plans for their rescue of the general there came a loud knock at the door. Bandula’s mother opened the door and gave a loud cry. “Mahesh, my daughter!” The officer that had escorted Mahesh nodded and left. Mahesh was whisked inside to the table and promptly served breakfast.

    Amidst the prodding of questions and shouts of relief, she explained that the “government” didn’t like the things she was saying about the President and that she should say nicer things. Both their mom and dad were so excited to have their daughter back that at that moment, none of that mattered. Their family was almost whole again.

    Bandula would have to wait for a better Sri Lanka, but for now it wasn’t so bad.

  • To Hone, Not To Sharpen

    The ‘honing’ stick is a classic piece of every knife set. The long cylindrical piece of ribbed steel is often mistaken as a ‘knife sharpener’. It’s not. It’s a honing stick. You may think, as I did for many years, that sharpening and honing are the same. This would be a mistake. Honing and sharpening are very, very different things.

    The process of sharpening is simple: drag the knife blade across the sharpening stone at a predetermined angle. The knife is dragged across the stone, yes a stone not a steel rod, until a new edge is formed. In the process of sharpening actual pieces of the knife blade are broken off as the steel grinds against the rock. Sharpening should only need to take place when the blades edge is destroyed.

    How is the blade destroyed? As the knife is used to cut, the precise steel edge is forced from side to side until it eventually curls over. Maybe you haven’t seen a curled edge, but you’ve probably used one before. We call them dull knives. With a dull blade you can sharpen it, thereby removing the dull edge and creating a new edge and in the process removing part of the knife. The better solution would be to hone the knife.

    The process of honing is equally simple as sharpening: drag the knife across the honing stick at a predetermined angle, about five times for each side. As the blade is dragged across the honing stick there should be a pleasant and harmonious ‘zing’ sound with each stroke. As the blade is dragged across the ridged honing stick, the curled edge is grabbed and pulled up, in essence uncurling the blade like a cowlick. The straightening of the blade makes it cut sharply and smoothly again – and here’s the reason for doing it – all without removing any steel from the blade. Thus, with the process of honing, the sharpness of the blade can be maintained along with extending the life of the blade almost indefinitely.

    Let me take a moment and apply this to organizations: When a new process is rolled out in an organization, it is usually designed to cut a difficult problem into more manageable pieces. As time goes on the new process loses its edge as it tries to cut into the problem. As the new process loses its effectiveness managers might be tempted to sharpen the process again, again. The problem with sharpening is that the process is ground against the hard stone of bureaucracy, with each pass removing pieces of the blade. Over time the blade is destroyed and the knife is useless.

    Instead of grinding the process into nothingness, managers should hone the process. This can be done by thoroughly reviewing the process and looking to see where the process might have curled over, thus causing the process to be less effective. Once the curling has been identified, then the process can be straightened so it can maintain its effectiveness.

    One time honing is not enough though. With knives, honing should take place after each time the knife is used; each and every time. While it may not seem practical to review processes each time they are used, consider that a full fledge investigation is not needed. Instead, each individual completing the process can ask themselves a few simple questions: Did the process flow naturally? Was the next step always clear? Was there any place where the process hung waiting for a manager to make a decision that the individual could have made? Was unnecessary information collected, distributed or recorded? Are there any obvious changes that should be made?

    With these few simple questions being asked after each process is completed the organization can use the cumulative knowledge of all the process workers to keep the process sharp and effective, or if needed consider the process destroyed and rebuild the process by sharpening it and trying again.